In the course of gathering money in order to fund my Nintendo DS purchase, I found myself inside a few GameStop stores. At one such store, I brought in two boxes of old games, systems, controllers, etc, to sell back. There, at the GameStop in Sierra Vista Mall in Clovis, CA, I ran into something I had never seen before.

I met the first decent GameStop employee.

The guy behind the counter was named Brandon. He was pleasant, patient with my army of trade-ins, knowledgeable, and most surprisingly of all, not incessantly annoying! I don’t know how he ended up working at GameStop. I think he got lost on the way to the Disney Store or something. Anyway, I can say that it was my first actual pleasant shopping experience at a GameStop ever. I preordered two DS Lites with him at that store. Later, the GameStop phone demon (err, automated calling machine) called my phone and asked me to take a survey about my shopping experience. Rather than hang up immediately, as is my usual reflex, I took the few minutes to press the buttons to express my happiness with the experience.

So there you go, Mr. Brandon from the Sierra Vista Mall GameStop. Your fine work got you written about on someone’s blog. Here’s to you, Real American Hero.